Wiki’s: Can Should You Let “Everyone” Edit?

When I first heard about Wiki’s I figured they were great tools if you only enabled editing for a few people, but then it wouldn’t be a Wiki right? The power of a Wiki is that you put up a web page and anyone (who should) can edit it.Wikipedia, the famous online dictionary, is made up of over one million entries that anyone can edit. Well anyone – until now.
Wikipedia started a policy that locks, temporarily, certain articles until the “vandal” editing dies down. Why should you care?
If you are implementing a Wiki in your business – you can make it so that only a few select people can edit it. But if you want to foster true “open” communication you should really open it for “all”. All does not mean if you have an internal company blog that just anyone in the world can edit it, but all would mean all your employees. Not just a few key staff.
If the editing goes a bit “crazy” one solution is to temporarily suspend open editing until things cool down.
The NY Times writesWikipedia’s come-one, come-all invitation to write and edit articles, and the surprisingly successful results, have captured the public imagination. But it is not the experiment in freewheeling collective creativity it might seem to be, because maintaining so much openness inevitably involves some tradeoffs.
At its core, Wikipedia is not just a reference work but also an online community that has built itself a bureaucracy of sorts ¬? one that, in response to well-publicized problems with some entries, has recently grown more elaborate. It has a clear power structure that gives volunteer administrators the authority to exercise editorial control, delete unsuitable articles and protect those that are vulnerable to vandalism.Smallbusiness.com is a Wiki – check it out.